10. VESSEL #2
Jacen was about to argue, but Ogden cut in. “At the moment, we have a more pressing concern.” He looked at Ged. “Best to dismiss your knights.”
Ged jerked his head toward the exit. “You know your roles.” Saraida and the other knights departed, but Seth refused to move.
Jacen seized the opportunity to slink out with Ilusha, only for Ogden to say, “Keep the telepaths. Let’s see if you can prove yourselves useful.
” He directed them halfway down the tower to a landing, through a corridor that opened on another stair.
Jacen could have sworn Ogden’s gloved hand trembled as he pushed through the door.
Jacen disliked everything about this. He was already up to his knees in this nightmare of a situation, and yet there he stood, poised to wade deeper. But what choice did he have? He ground his teeth and followed the others.
The storeroom below was empty but for a fine layer of dust and, covered by a roughspun blanket, something shaped uncomfortably like a human body.
Ged stopped at the foot of the stairs. “What’s this?”
“A problem,” said Ogden. He crouched with a grunt of arthritic discomfort and pulled the blanket aside.
The corpse belonged to a young man, whose throat had been cut with a fine instrument.
A sheet of dried blood stained his neck beneath a dark red line.
By Jacen’s estimation, he had been dead for a day, maybe longer.
His limbs were stiff, his chest did not rise, and there was no ebb and flow of extradimensional energy about him.
Yet he wore a blindfold. His hands were tied, his ears stuffed with wax.
“This man came to my clinic as a patient,” Ogden explained.
“He complained of a persistent headache and told me something had crawled inside his ear while he slept. Now, this is not unusual in the Knots. We have an insect problem. But then I examined him, and—”
He hefted the corpse on its side and removed the wax in one ear. The area was crusted with blood and appeared almost . . .
“Looks more like a rodent chewed through there,” Seth remarked, wrinkling his nose.
But Ilusha asked quietly, “You said he was conscious and speaking?”
Ogden replaced the wax. “He was. I observed significant trauma to his inner ear. It’s my assessment that something fairly large forced its way inside.”
“It didn’t kill him?” said Seth.
Jacen’s spine prickled as Ilusha locked his gaze. The inquisitor stood as far from the corpse as the room would allow, arms wrapped tight around herself.
So, Jacen said it aloud. “A demon wouldn’t have. They can mold themselves into tiny spaces, then blend seamlessly with brain tissue.”
Without thinking about it, for an instant forgetting everything but the task before him, he approached the body and knelt.
He examined the man’s ear and lifted the blindfold to check his fixed, glassy pupils.
“Seamless is the operative word. Demons don’t tend to leave trauma like this.
” He looked up at Ogden. “But you called us down here anyway. Why?” If Jacen hadn’t known better, he would have suspected that whatever had burrowed into this man’s ear was being intentionally careless.
Forceful. Perhaps even trying to inflict pain.
Demons were dangerous and, by the gods’ definition, ontologically evil, but Jacen had encountered enough to know they were not malicious.
They possessed only the animal instinct to survive.
Cruelty required intelligence.
“He did not exhibit signs of possession, nor of any malady I could address, so I sent him home,” Ogden said.
“On the way out, he collapsed. My staff and I tried everything. I was prepared to euthanize him, but early this morning . . . I heard something amiss. I found him wandering about, very much awake.” He pursed his lips.
“It was also apparent to me that he was covering his tracks and had likely been searching my clinic each night since he arrived.”
Jacen glanced at the man’s slit throat, then back at Ogden. “Did you kill him?”
“Of course. But first he spoke to me in a way that . . .” Ogden shook his head. “I have theories. We need them confirmed.”
“This is a dead body.” Jacen stood, brushing dust off his robes. “You want me to perform an exorcism on it?”
Ged answered for Ogden. “Yes.” He frowned at the corpse with a new, wary fascination. “If we’re being watched, we need to know more.” “If there was a demon in there, it would be long dead by now,”
Jacen protested.
“Would it?” said Ogden.
Jacen spread his arms. “In every circumstance I’ve ever encountered, yes. You might as well ask me to exorcise a piece of meat.”
“And what of those you haven’t encountered?” Ogden challenged. “Surely, you’re not so arrogant as to believe you’ve seen everything of the Source.”
Five years earlier, Jacen might have been. Now . . . he knew far less than he cared to consider. The demon in the canyon, certainly, was different from anything he’d ever encountered. If the red thing was indeed real, it had existed outside the Source without a host for decades. Centuries.
Perhaps it wasn’t the only one.
But the prospect of prodding around a dead man’s mind, searching for some unknown horror that might be watching him this very moment, filled Jacen with dread. Besides—he was nowhere near sober.
He said to Ogden, “If you know something we don’t, kindly skip the theatrics and tell us.”
Ogden shrugged. “As I said. I’m simply theorizing.”
“I can try,” said Ilusha, with so much reluctance the words might have been dragged out of her with pliers. “I haven’t assisted with an exorcism since I was a novitiate, but—”
“For gods’ sake,” Jacen exclaimed. “I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?” Seth asked. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m well enough.” Jacen had a faint recollection of being much younger and boasting about his ability to perform an exorcism drunk. Maybe this served him right.
He knelt once more and put his hands on the body. He suppressed a shudder at the cold, dead flesh, stiff beneath his palms. He closed his eyes and opened his mind.
As expected, nothing remained to guide him. Just a husk where a soul should be. The fog in his head did not help matters; proper focus eluded him. Each time he thought he sensed something, it slipped out of his grasp.
A demonic mind was more fluid than a human’s. Brother Marez had explained this to Jacen by pinning an enormous cockroach to a table with a needle and, as it squirmed, slicing off its head.
“It can live without it,” the old priest had said, as the insect continued to wriggle.
“It has neither bones nor blood vessels; it requires far less structure than we do. It does not require lungs to breathe, nor a brain to think. A demon is similar. They are thought made physical, capable of blending in to the fabric of consciousness.”
Jacen continued to search, until a greater picture emerged. Something was there, a cold and slimy mass woven into that dead grey matter. It was ancient, shockingly intelligent, and—
And it was aware of him.
Jacen pulled back with a cry of alarm.
“What is it?” Ged demanded. “What do you see?” “There’s something in there,” Jacen choked out. “Alive.”
It seemed to be hiding, lying in wait, watching for the opportunity to—what? Escape? He sensed no fear from it.
Jacen got a hold of himself, summoning the authority he used to address a congregation. “Get back upstairs. Now.”
Even Ged obeyed. Jacen waved them onward. “All the way. Go!” Only Seth—the idiot—hesitated, lingering at the bottom of the stairs.